Video 7:03
Menzies centre moves into new home

Updated
Fri Feb 12 16:30:00 EST 2010

The Menzies Research Institute has moved into a new permanent home in Hobart.

Transcript

For five years they've been spread around temporary locations, now they've all moved into a 60 million dollar purpose built home in Hobart. The building is also home to the University's 365 medical students, who have moved from Sandy Bay and the Ryal Hobart Hospital to co-locate with the institute.

AIRLIE WARD, PRESENTER: After five years spread around temporary locations, the Menzies Research Institute has a new home. The university's 365 medical students have moved in to co-locate with the institute, uniting Tasmania's medical research.

The design divided public opinion and it took a couple of goes to get the plan through the Hobart City Council, but there's no doubting the pleasure of the institute's director

SIMON FOOTE, MENZIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE: It's like from going from living under the bridge to moving into a Sandy Bay manor. It's absolutely fantastic. So we went from six or seven different sites to this one. So, for example, we've been - spent the last five years traipsing across Hobart, not meeting people, to now we're all in the same building, all our equipment's in the same building, we see each other all the time. It's just night and day different.

AIRLIE WARD: Simon Foote joined the Menzies Institute five years ago. Since then it's grown from about 80 staff to almost 400. Professor Foote's been a driving force behind Menzies merging with the university's medical school.

SIMON FOOTE: In 2006 when we amalgamated all the research into the Menzies, a lot of that research - probably most of that research that came in came from the School of Medicine which is in the medical faculty. So they came in and they're a large part of the institute as we know it today. What that actually ended up doing was making the management of research in Tasmania, medical research in Tasmania, occur under the one umbrella.

AIRLIE WARD: He says the new and expanded institute makes Menzies a more attractive place to work.

SIMON FOOTE: I can tell you that the very first ads we put out, we actually got nobody with the sufficient qualifications or experience to appoint, whereas recent ones we are getting very high quality people applying to come and work here.

AIRLIE WARD: Professor Foote says Menzies will still have a strong focus on population health research which established the institute's reputation in areas such as sudden infant death syndrome, but will spread its wings into more research.

SIMON FOOTE: So there are new opportunities for collaboration working, all new projects happening. Also our proximity with the hospital means that we will be developing a better relationship with the hospital. So there are people doing research, clinical research, allied health research in the hospital. That'll be drawn in so that we have collaborations between the Menzies and the hospital. And that's gonna change enormously over the next 12 months as well.

AIRLIE WARD: The building was designed in response to the needs of staff. The layout also reflects Professor Foote's desire to encourage collaboration, including a large communal dining area and transparent meeting rooms and making the entire top floor shared laboratory space.

SIMON FOOTE: The reason that that's just one laboratory is we're trying to encourage interaction between our groups, and again that appears to be working very well. So research relies on being able to talk to people, people bounce ideas off each other, discuss the technologies, share equipment. We've not been able to do that at a very large level because we have been in different places. But now we run into each other in the stairwells, morning tea, so there's a very different environment and atmosphere. Already there are new grants and new ideas, new collaborations that have been sort of put in place.

AIRLIE WARD: It also means more bang for buck. The cost of laboratory space is about four times that of office space because of the equipment and various regulatory requirements.

SIMON FOOTE: Some of our bacteria, for example, we use, we grow proteins in E.coli and this is done all over the world. But there are rules in place to make sure that those bacteria that we make don't actually get out into the general community. So, for example, when you leave the laboratory, you take your coat off, you leave it next to the laboratory, you wash your hands before you go out. All liquids and anything that we produce, all our waste has to go through a autoclave, which is a steam steriliser, before it actually leaves this floor.

AIRLIE WARD: Medical research is expensive. On top of government money, the institute relies on philanthropy. It's recently been successful in getting a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for research into new anti-malarial drugs.

Despite all the practical necessities, a Melbourne firm, Lyon Architects, had some artistic licence. The non-uniform windows act like picture frames to the views outside.

So what was the motivation behind the construction material and the design of this building?

ADRIAN STANIC, ARCHITECT: I suppose there are a number of inspirations to the building. We were really captivated by the surrounding mountains, Mount Wellington, and we really wanted to incorporate that theme into the building. We were also interested in the water.

AIRLIE WARD: But there's also recognition of the medical work within.

You know, some people have said it is almost like a stylised connection of cells in the human body. Was that part of what you referenced?

ADRIAN STANIC: Absolutely. We were looking at abstractly thinking about all of those things in the way we generated the design for the building.

AIRLIE WARD: The theme continues inside.

ADRIAN STANIC: The interior spaces also connect with the idea of the Derwent River and the opening and closing of the spaces in the interior creating a progression of spaces through to the central hub area.

AIRLIE WARD: Trickier, and a first for the architects was incorporating the archaeological discoveries made during construction into the building. Structural remains of the 19th Century buildings are visible through glass panels in the floor and various finds have been put on display.

While there's a nod to the past, the future and its environmental considerations are also evident, including solar hot water panels.

ADRIAN STANIC: A state-of-the-art laboratory and lecture theatre await the intake of students for the start of the academic year, and with work already under underway on stage two of the Menzies upgrade, Professor Simon Foote believes the facility will help keep graduates in Tasmania.

SIMON FOOTE: But it will also allow us to actually add more functionality. So for example there's no dedicated clinical research base at the Royal Hobart Hospital. This new building will actually contain that. It'll mean that hospital'll be more attractive to actually attract new people coming into it and it'll mean that people who are actually working in the hospital, be they clinicians or working in allied health, will have their research aspirations met and therefore retention rates should increase as well.